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I get that I can't claim home to my normal place or work as business mileage as that's my commute.
However, a few times a week, I'll either go directly to site, or come home directly from site. I live some distance south of the office and our "patch" so I just used to claim the office to site distance.
However, a new company policy has been released which makes it perfectly clear that I still can't calim home to office or back but that I can claim home to site if I go straight there and site to home if I don'tgo via the office. It tells me that the full distance is claimable and non taxable.
Before I start claiming all this extra mileage, I'd like to know if this agrees with what the tax man says as I'd hate to get tripped up a year down the line.
Is anyone familiar with the [u]current[/u] hmrc rules concerning this issue?
The car is a private lease and the mileage allowance we get from the company is based on AA fuel calculations so is closer to 20ppm than the hmrc 45ppm.
Am I right in thinking, so long as what I claim in a year still comes in below 45pence x my actual mileage, then the tax man isn't going to care?
It's this change from only claiming a portion of the site to home journey rather than all of it that has me suspicious.
Anyone know what's what? I don't speak taxese very well.
As above you're right claim away home-site. As always if you want to play safe get a little cash book/phone app and log your business mileage date/from/to etc.
Also in case you didn't know you can also claim tax relief on the difference between the mileage rate and the HMRC allowance.
That's great news, I've been trawling the HMRC site but couldn't find it in plain english. Has it always been like that whether site is closer or further away than the office?
As far as I know for tax purposes any temporary place of work is fine for business mileage. Some employers take the view you'd do some miles anyway, i.e. if you had a 20 mile commute normally and a 100 mile commute to site one day they'd only pay you for the 80 mile difference, but that's not the tax man and in theory you could still claim tax relief on the full amount.
I.e. in your case employer would pay 20p/mile for the 80 miles extra, you could claim relief for the 25p/mile under the allowance the 80 miles were and for the full 45p/mile the 20 miles were.
This doc is probably what you're after:
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/eimanual/EIM32055.htm
Or the whole boring lot is here:
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/eimanual/eim31200.htm
You're a star, thank you.
Also in case you didn't know you can also claim tax relief on the difference between the mileage rate and the HMRC allowance.
I'm amazed by the number of people who don't realise this - it's worth >£1k a year to me. A lot of my colleagues can't understand why I turn down the company fuel card, but I know for a fact they'd be better off without it.
^^^ what turn down free fuel....
(yes they are bonkers unless their weekends regularly involve driving to Scotland from Plymouth regularly)